I'm ready to stab myself in the head!

[samoscratch]

hello again all,

I'm a bit peeved... i've had to set my agp speed to 4x because my games are highly unstable on 8x causing irreversible lockups where the only solution is to reboot. I've searched and read articles all over the web stating different solutions and problems to this dilemma, ranging from different agp voltages to underclocking etc etc. i guess this is my last pathetic attempt to find someone with similar or same problems(and solutions mind you! hehe) before i start buying new things e.g. power supply, mobo etc...I realize that close to no games take advantage of agp8x but nevertheless i don't like conforming without explanation. I have heard people mention that it could be because of my cheap mobo, but i paid 160 bucks which I thought would get me at least something decent, anyways these are the things i have tried in order to fix the problem:

1.switched drivers(3.7 - 3.10)
2.disabled fastwrites
3.disabled sideband addressing
4.played with agp voltage
5.updated mobo bios and drivers
6.played on lowest settings
7.disabled acpi mode(not a good idea btw)

my specs are to the right if anyone has anything to help me, i would greatly appreciate it;
samo

[nofool]

Go back to the config you were using before (with the Cat. 3.7's?). Download DriverCleaner and also the Catalyst 3.9 drivers and 3.9 Control Panel.

Then, Unload the 3.7's, do a boot in "Safe" mode, use DriverCleaner to douche out all the old driver residue, and reboot normally.

Now, load the Cat. 3.9 drivers. Do another normal boot. Lastly, load the 3.9 Control Panel.

See if that clears up the problem. If not then you may have another problem altogether. You've got a great video card, so unless it's just a lemon, that shouldn't be the problem.

The other alternative is that you may just want to go back to the Catalyst 3.7 drivers and CP and stay with them if they worked well for you, but you should be able to use the 3.9's without any problem, and I find that they are excellent, problem-free drivers.

[nofool]

Who needs it? It has been speculated that Doom III might make use of the extra capacity of 8X, but no other game does. I run my 8X card on a 4X mobo and have excellent performance even though my card is nowhere as good as yours.

IMHO, AGP 8X is pretty much a "so what" development. With PCI-Express coming out by this summer, it will be totally superseded....

[Stang289]

there are problems with KT400 boards running 8x agp stable, dont worry about it 8x aint nothing but a "cosmetic" feature so to speak.

[temporal]

Originally posted by nofool
Who needs it? It has been speculated that Doom III might make use of the extra capacity of 8X, but no other game does. I run my 8X card on a 4X mobo and have excellent performance even though my card is nowhere as good as yours.

IMHO, AGP 8X is pretty much a "so what" development. With PCI-Express coming out by this summer, it will be totally superseded....

You might not have your thoughts compiled on this one...

Yeah it’s true; the extra bandwidth to the graphics adapter provided by AGP 8X has a only ever given more than a few extra frames a second in fully T&L accelerated 3D games because graphics technology is designed to reduce the amount of traffic between the graphics processor and the host bridge as much as possible. That’s what Transform, Lighting and Clipping, Vertex Shader and Pixel Shader is all about. PCI Express 12x does provide twice the bandwidth of AGP 8X; 2GB/s vs. 4GB/s (or 8GBs bidirectional) but as you already highlighted bandwidth is not the problem, evident in the difference between AGP 4X (1GBs) and 8X.

The main marketing reasons for PCI Express migration is to adopt the means for future flexible technology now and lower cost chipsets and board designs as the PCI Express bus replaces dedicated interconnects (like CSA, AGP, V-Link etc) necessary now for performance.

I’m sure you already know all this but the point is it’s the graphics processor itself that’s the limiting factor, not the bus. Eventually graphics processors will require more bandwidth but at this point it’s just a building block.

All I’m saying is don’t get too excited or you might get the “New super fast AGP 8X!” let down again.

[Drumphil]

unless the motherboard just doesn't like agp 8x (possible), then I'd try another power supply. Low voltages under load (when you have something running so you can't chekc the voltages), are often the cause of problems like this. Can you try the card in another computer to make sure that it works fine.

[samoscratch]

it's not possible for me to try it elsewhere. but I do own a generic cheap power supply which is going out the window asap, thnx everyone,

samo

[heffeque]

I'm using a cheapo PSU and no problems... I'd say it's the KT400, it has always had problems with AGP8x

[reggis]

I have a gigabyte KT400 w/9800 pro -- 8x, fast writes enabled. It is stable for gaming but cannot use any of the higher performance bios settings because of system/application instability. The lastest hyperion drivers and Cat 3.10 have given me the best appearance/performance.